Hyun

My work and me

About Me

Hello, my name is Hyun — I am a designer and technologist creating symbiotic relationships between information and people. I am currently working with researchers, engineers and designers at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York.
If you have any questions or have something in mind for discussion, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Legacy

Philly Photo Day App

Philly Photo Day App

2013 — Community:: Lead Developer and Designer working at GDloft PHL

SYNOPSIS: A long time partner of GDloft PHL, Philadephia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) runs an annual photo event where anyone can take a photo with any equipment and submit it to the organization. For submissions the hosting organization gathers a panel of photographers to judge the photographs. The chosen photographs will be shown all over the city of Philadelphia, in places like billboards, buses, and other public placements.

Major Skills Applied

Visual Design

User Experience

Full-stack Development

Ad-hoc Technology Interpreter

I have been lucky to work on GDloft PHL's first mobile web application. Along with other designers at GDloft PHL, I have contributed to new visual elements and interaction patterns that worked harmoniously with an existing identity from printed material. I have produced and deployed the web application code; written in HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, on a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP Stack.

Project

For previous runs of Philly Photo Day the organization's method of processing a photograph was extremely manual; it involved people submitting a photograph over email, which was slow and unreliable to begin with, and processing them with inappropriate tools. With the general population of Philadelphia being the target of this application and its related event, the entire solution and delivery had to be dead simple.

The user target needs were gathered from multiple interviews of both casual and professional photographers that were current and previous subscribers and business partners of Philadelphia Photo Arts Center.

General population of Philadelphia

The web application is aimed for the general public, so the design and interaction patterns had to be familiar and simple but at the same time, have a unique presence that ties to the event and the event host. The application needed to be accessible with very low barrier of entry.

Need 1: No need to install an app

Need 2: Send a single photograph and forget

Need 3: Be notified of selection, and event details

The release of a newer iOS version allowed files to be uploaded on a web application. GDloft and I decided to take advantage of this launch and create a fully automated back-end system and web application photo processor for the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center to be used in Philly Photo Day.

Process

WEB APPLICATION made the most sense in terms of reaching out to people relatively quickly regardless of device platform. By creating a web application, the fee and screening process of the App Store and Google Play Store were gone as well. The primary targets of the web application were iPhone and Android users, but the software also needed to accommodate for desktop uploads of people using traditional cameras and DSLR's. The web application was a custom application that is written with HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. The web application allows the user to take a photograph or choose a photo from the mobile device's library. The upload is processed after the user fills out the submission information, and when the upload is complete, the user is provided with an email of his or her success. The staff of PPAC receives a photo in their FTP server with a file name system they have designated. At any point during the event, the staff of PPAC can download the submissions in multiple ZIP files, or view them in an online gallery.

Outcome

Homepage of the web application.Customized fields for the web application.Confirmation of user submission before uploading.